


Poems and Baby Cradles

by SummerStormFlower



Series: Lost & Lost [7]
Category: Quack Pack (Cartoon 1996)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Child Abandonment, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Sibling Love, i don’t know, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24509758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerStormFlower/pseuds/SummerStormFlower
Summary: Huey, Dewey and Louie get to Burbank and find the old house their parents used to live in.
Relationships: Daisy Duck/Donald Duck, Dewey Duck & Huey Duck & Louie Duck
Series: Lost & Lost [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1470302
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	Poems and Baby Cradles

“Hugh,” Louie whispers, tapping his brother on the shoulder, “Go to bed. I’ll drive.”

Huey’s eyes are red and he yawns. He’s been driving since midnight, functioning solely off of coffee and stubbornness. They were almost at Burbank. If they keep driving, they’d make it there by morning. 

“Come on. Pull over,” Louie tells him. 

Huey sighs and pinches the bridge of his beak. “Okay,” he acquiesces. 

He parks on the side of the highway and undoes his seatbelt, then he and Louie switch. 

“You good?” Huey asks. Louie hated driving at night. 

“I’m good,” Louie tells him, looking him in the eye for good measure. 

Huey goes to the back, closing the curtain behind him. Dewey’s snoring away in his bed, notebook and pencil fallen on the floor. 

Huey climbs into the bed he and Louie share, closing his tired eyes. Tomorrow’s going to be an interesting day. He’ll need his energy.  
______________________________________

Burbank is hot and bright, the sun beating down on the land. Louie likes the heat. Dewey can’t stand it. 

“Well we’re here,” Louie says, driving slowly, as he glances around. It’s no tourist spot. Or at least not this part of town. Is Burbank a town? Come to think of it, Louie didn’t know anything about this place. 

“Yeah,” Huey mutters, his thinking face on, “Now what?”

Louie slows down more, growing hesitant. He shrugs. 

Dewey leans over Louie’s seat. “For now, let’s get some gas,” he says. 

Louie nods and turns into the nearest gas station. It’s early, so there’s not very many people. 

“Do we need any food?” Huey asks Dewey because Dewey always knows the state of the fridge. 

“Well, we’re running low on chocolates—“

“No, we are not getting you more candy!” Louie groans. 

Dewey crosses his arms. “I’ll have you know chocolate and candy are two different things. And how dare you.”

Louie rolls his eyes. “Seriously. You need to eat healthier.”

“I do!” Dewey proclaims, “Yesterday, I didn’t have any marshmallows.”

“That’s because you finished the bag the day before.”

“Nitpick.”

“I’ll just buy some milk or something,” Huey says, unbuckling and leaving the camper van. He’s acting cool, but Louie and Dewey can tell the slow morning has him on edge. Huey gets mad when he’s on edge, but he’s doing a good job of not showing it so far. 

Louie isn’t as good at hiding his emotions. The slow morning is making him anxious too. Louie’s never liked doing anything slow. He needs it fast and instant; he feeds off of it. Without that, things move awkwardly and make him nervous. 

“Hey, it’ll be alright,” Dewey says, patting Louie’s shoulder, “We’re gonna be alright, ya hear?”

“I know. Just... what are we doing? Like, is Dad here? Or did he leave something for us?” Louie asks, “I wanna know.”

Dewey sighs, “We’ll find out. I’m sure we will.”

Suddenly, the door bursts open and Huey comes back with a note in hand. “Jack was here.”  
______________________________________

The note Jack left for them contained an address. As it turns out, he and their mother lived together in a little house on a hill while they were still in their eggs. He wants them to go see it. He said there’s something that belongs to them inside. He didn’t say what though. 

Huey looks like he wants to punch something. He’s clearly had enough of their dad’s stupid riddles. 

Dewey’s just trying to be positive, but the constant driving, travel and mystery is taking a toll on him too. 

Louie never gives up, but he’s getting tired. Jack isn’t taking them seriously. This isn’t a game to them. Why does it have to be so hard?

Louie pushes that out of his mind. There’s no use in thinking like that. When he was little and Uncle Donald was away at work, Daisy once told him to always take the hard path in life. In the long run, he’d get stronger for it. Louie had always thought of Daisy as the mom he’d never had. Donald raised his nephews, but Daisy had sure helped. 

It wasn’t that hard to find the house, it was hard getting up the hill. Dewey ended up switching with Louie when Louie just couldn’t drive anymore. 

The house wasn’t anything fancy. It was old and clearly hadn’t been lived in for years. But for such an old house, it definitely looked nice. It had a cozy feel to it. 

Huey walks up to the door and is about to knock. Then he sees a ring of keys poking out of the mailbox. 

“Guess we just go in,” Huey says, looking for the right key to unlock the door. 

A mixture of nerves and excitement thrum through Louie’s veins. Huey feels it too, shoulders tense and eyebrows drawn in intent focus. 

When Huey gets the door open, he takes a deep breath. Then looks at Louie, who’s trying hard not to bounce on his feet. 

“Let’s go,” Huey says, and Louie grins, feeling the rush of adventure. 

“No.”

Huey and Louie blink at their brother. Dewey is still by the camper van, never having followed them up to the door. 

“I-I can’t,” he says, biting his lip. He slides down the side of the van, curling around his knees. “Not yet.”

Louie thrives off of fast and instant, and diving right into something without overthinking it. Huey thrives off of leadership and running straight at a challenge, facing it head on.

Dewey thrives off of thought and analysis. He needs things slow, so he can think things through. Emotions have always been harder for Dewey in a way—and his coping skills aren’t necessarily the best. He needs time to figure out how he’s feeling before he faces those emotions head on. It’s the reason why he’s either buried in his computer or writing in his notebook.

“Okay,” Huey says in understanding, “Want one of us to stay with you?”

Dewey shakes his head. “No.” It’s easier to think when he’s alone. 

“Alright,” Huey says. 

Dewey likes his space, so he likes to be left alone a lot. Louie is used to it, but is always hesitant. Louie doesn’t like being alone. It’s harder for him to get why Dewey does. 

“Come on,” says Huey, slinging an arm around Louie. 

As they step over the threshold, Louie wonders if it should feel like coming home.  
______________________________________

Huey stands in the doorway of the room and stares. It’s a bedroom, but it’s not just any bedroom. There are three cradles lined up neatly against the wall. Red, blue and green, with the names Huey, Dewey and Louie carved in them. 

What a coincidence that ended up being their favourite colours.

Hesitantly, Huey goes all the way into the room, unsure if he’s allowed to or not. Huey’s never really cared about being allowed or not—he breaks the rules all the time. But this is different. 

This was supposed to be their room. It could’ve been their room... but it wasn’t. Not really. 

It’s warm and it smells like baby powder. Huey looks and sees that there’s a bottle of baby powder on the dresser. How long had that been there? And why?

Huey decides to turn his attention elsewhere. He walks up to the cradles and touches each of them, feeling the smooth wood. They’d been handmade. And well done too. Clearly, a lot of care had been put into them. 

Huey swallows, throat constructing. That care put behind the making of these baby cradles... had not been present in their lives. 

The only care they knew was Uncle Donald’s care. Uncle Donald was their parent, their dad in everything but name. And Daisy had played a huge role in their childhood too, like the mom they never got to know. 

Huey should feel angry. Angry at this room, this house, and their so-called father. He wants to be angry. 

But all he feels is the heaviness in his chest. 

“Huey!” calls Louie.

Huey quickly leaves the bedroom and finds Louie in the kitchen, sitting on the floor in front of a small cardboard box of notebooks.

“What is that?”

Louie’s reading the seventh page of one of the notebooks. There’s about nine of them, but there’s no more than twenty pages in each. Louie looks up at his brother with glassy eyes, beak trembling. 

“Mom wrote poems for us... before we were born.”

Huey’s breath stutters. These must be what Jack meant when he said there was something that belonged to them in this house. 

Louie’s crying all of a sudden, tears spilling down his cheeks. “She loved us,” he said. 

Huey gets down on his knees, putting his arm around his brother and pulling him close. “Yeah buddy, I’m sure she did,” he says comfortingly, although he doesn’t quite believe his own words. 

Louie inhales, digging his heels against his eyes. “Then why’d she leave us?” he sobs. 

Huey hugs Louie tighter. “I don’t know,” he says softly. 

Maybe she’d loved the stars more than them.  
______________________________________

Dewey eventually works up the nerve to come in. Looks around the house like it’s a museum. Hugs Louie when he sees he’s been crying. 

They show him the poems, and he reads a few of them. His own eyes get a little watery, but he tries hard not to cry in front of his brothers. Not that they’d care if he did. They’d seen each other cry a bunch of times. But Dewey was like that; more private about his feelings. 

Dewey’s the one who finds a second note on the kitchen counter from their dad. 

“Where does he want us to go now?” Huey asks, an angry snide in his voice. Louie sniffles beside him. Huey’s anger subsides just a little. 

Dewey reads the note and then sighs. He looks at his brothers. “Duck Leaf,” he says.

Huey groans. “Seriously? That’s in the opposite direction we’ve been going. It’ll take us forever to get there!”

“But we’re still going, right?” Louie asks. 

Dewey looks at Huey. 

Huey crosses his arms and glowers. “Yeah, we’re going.”

“We can go through Duckburg and check in with Uncle Donald,” Dewey says with a small smile. He’s been missing Uncle Donald. They all have. 

“And isn’t Rosebud Village on the way to Duck Leaf?” Louie asks excitedly.

Dewey grins at Huey. “We can visit Mrs. Beakley and Webby.”

Huey’s sour mood brightens considerably. He smirks a little and says, “Guess it won’t be such a bad road trip after all.”  
______________________________________

That night, Dewey can’t stay asleep. He keeps waking up and tossing and turning, but he just can’t sleep. There’s too many thoughts in his head. 

He’s not the only one who can’t sleep though. 

When he turns around, he sees Huey sitting up in bed, looking at a photograph. 

“What’s that?” Dewey asks, rubbing his eyes. 

Huey looks and sees him awake. Then he carefully leans over to hand Dewey the photo, being as quiet as possible. Louie is draped over Huey’s ankle, fast asleep. 

Dewey takes the photo and turns it around. It’s the picture of their mom Uncle Donald gave them. 

“You brought this along?” Dewey asks. 

Huey nods. 

Dewey lays his cheek on his arm and stares at the photo. Mom looks a lot like Uncle Donald. Dewey wonders if they look like her. 

“Maybe,” Huey begins hesitantly, “maybe after we find Dad... we can look for Mom.”

Dewey blinks. He would’ve expected this kind of sentiment from Louie, but not from Huey. 

“You... want to look for Mom?”

Huey shrugs, not making eye contact. “Maybe.”

“... In space?”

Huey glares at Dewey. “I just said maybe. Not for sure.”

Dewey sits up. “Why?”

Huey sighs, slumping. “I wanna know... what was so great about the stars, she left her own children,” he responds. 

Dewey looks at the picture again, heart clenching. He swallows and looks back at Huey, who’s staring at the moon out the window with a far off expression. 

“Well,” Dewey whispers, “One missing parent at a time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.


End file.
